Psalm 61:3

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; for You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Cross and Reward

To have faith in Jesus Christ is
to bear a cross.To believe in Him as
the Son of God, to confess Him as Lord, to trust that He alone can save us from
the just wrath of God in heaven, is to strap those two splintery, wooden beams
to our backs and carry them to the point of death.

We
often miss that when we read passages like Matthew 10, but we need to be
reminded of it.The cross is not merely
an instrument of suffering, although that is certainly included.The cross is an instrument of death.People die on crosses.That is their entire purpose.

So,
to have faith in Jesus Christ is to die.It is to die toward anything that would compete within us for our love,
trust, and fear of Him.And in Matthew
10 Jesus tells us what a few of those things are.

Faith
in Jesus entails that we die to our families.It means that we place our sons and daughters, fathers and mothers,
parents and grandchildren in a subordinate position to Jesus.Christ is number one.I might love my family more than I love
myself, but I am not permitted to love them more than God, nor God’s Son.

A
professor in college shared the story of her relationship with her orthodox
Jewish family after her own conversion from Judaism to Lutheranism.She left the faith of her ancestors for the
conviction that the Old Testament is fulfilled in the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.

And
her uncle, an orthodox rabbi, wanted her parents to declare her legally
dead.Can you imagine what risk she
took, what pain she went through in conversion?There was the possibility that her family would never, literally never,
speak to her again.

Thankfully
her parents did not go through with it.Rather, they gave her a set of rules.She may come into their home for visits, but she must never speak of her
Christian faith.She must leave Jesus at
the front door.

So
what does she do?She brings it up
anyway.Her mother cries and her father
gets angry, storming out of the room.But she brings Jesus with her, and shares His Gospel with the family,
even though it causes great strife.She
bears her cross.She dies to family.

Are
we that bold in our own homes?Do we
dare to look an apathetic spouse in the eye and challenge them to attend
worship services?Do we have the guts to
call our adult children and remind them that Jesus is calling them to
repentance, even though they have rejected the faith?Will we risk making Thanksgiving dinner a bit
awkward this year by bringing up the unmentionables of the one true religion?

Do we have the
faith to believe that even if our families were to get angry, even if they were
to reject us as arrogant or judgmental or out of touch, Jesus would be enough,
He would provide for all our needs of body and soul?

Family
is a great blessing.But Jesus comes
first.

Taking
up the cross, following Jesus, means dying to ourselves.We all have wants, desires, plans, and
dreams.We have hopes and fears, some
small and others large.But these also
must submit to Christ.He must be the
driving force behind our agenda, not our own whims.

The
personal decisions that we make regarding what we will do with our time, how we
will spend our money, to what sort of education we will subject our children,
must first go through the test: what does Jesus call me to be, to do.

The Christian
dies to self.You may have great dreams,
good hopes and desires.But Jesus comes
first.

The Christian
dies to sin.We take up the cross and
follow Jesus all the way to Calvary where we sacrifice, not our money or food
or animals, but our sinful nature, our evil, our idolatry and
self-centeredness.

Today we come to
the cross of Jesus.Hold nothing
back.Have you died to your family, or
do you fear losing them more than losing Jesus?Have you died to yourself, or are you keep back a few private pleasures
that you are just not ready to sacrifice?

It is time.It is time to lay them all down, to drop them
here and let them die, along with the guilt and shame that comes along with
displeasing and dishonoring a God who loves you more than anything.

But how dare
He?How dare Jesus demand that we die to
our families, our precious loved ones?What gives Him the right to supplant our hopes and dreams, to tell us
that a goal is unworthy?Who does He
think He is saying that all sin must die?Why can’t I keep just the little ones that don’t hurt anyone else?

It is not as if
Jesus ever had to die to His family, die to His dreams, die to sin.Jesus never had to bear the cross!

Oh yeah, I guess
He did.Jesus bore a cross that you and
I cannot possibly imagine.He did not
simply die to His own sin, but bore the sins of the world upon His
shoulders.He died with your sin and
mine.

Jesus died to
His own hopes and dreams.We see that
most clearly as drops of blood fall to the ground and He prays, “Father, not my
will, but Yours be done.”

Jesus died to
His family.He left His mother Mary at
the cross in the care of a disciple.But
worse than that, Jesus died forsaken by His Father in Heaven.He died in a way that you or I will never
have to face: alone, without God’s mercy.

Jesus took up
this cross so that we would not have to.He bore this burden in our place.He died to family, to self, to sin, for you.

Lay down your
sins, die to them.And take up your
reward.

Jesus warns that
those carrying and those receiving the Gospel will face hardship.They will have to sacrifice strong family
ties, personal wishes, and favored sins.They will die to family, self, and sin.

But with the
cross also comes the reward.“Whoever
receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives Him who sent
me.The one who receives a prophet, a
righteous person, a little one, will by no means lose his reward.”

The reward of
faith, when one has died, is to rise.With His cross Jesus earns our reward.With His resurrection He begins to distribute it.And at Pentecost Jesus launches a worldwide
initiative to bring that reward to all people.

The reward that
we are given—the reward that is unearned, yet ours by grace—is that all sin and
all guilt and all shame has been crucified with Christ.Jesus has crucified our evil desires.He has sacrificed our sins.Jesus was put to death, and He took our death
with Him.

The reward of
faith, then, is forgiveness for all the things we have put before Christ.But not merely forgiveness—it is forgiveness
toward an end, forgiveness with a purpose.It brings with it life and salvation.It brings resurrection from death, a concrete eternity with Jesus and
all the others who bore the cross, died to sin, and received their reward.

The desires and
hopes that cannot be fulfilled in this world will be completely surpassed in
the world to come.There you will learn
to desire what is good, to desire all that God gives, and you will have it
filled up and overflowing.

The family that
is united in Christ, though it be through much struggle, is the family that is
together forever.Nothing, not even the
grave, can tear them apart when He is their glue.Peace sacrificed here will result in peace
together with Jesus forever and ever.

To be filled
with faith by the Holy Spirit is to bear a cross.It means death to family, death to self,
death to sin.But the reward is far
greater.Like Job before us we shall
receive back far more than what has been lost.

The reward of faith, given from God’s hand as a
gift, is worth the cross.Jesus Christ
has crucified our sin and evil with Him so that He might reward us beyond
anything we could ever hope to attain.The reward of faith is this: we are forgiven and death is undone.